At 02:38 PM 2/11/00 -0600, Russell Maatman wrote:
>To the ASA group:
>
>See my comments below.
>
>David Bowman wrote on Friday, February 11, 2000 7:34 AM,
>
>> Regarding Glenn's comments:
>>
>> >Yes I am advocating a sort of Turing test for the image of God. If
>someone
>> >who doesn't look like me, acts human, prays, speaks, uses tools, and
>other
>> >things like this, then he is human regardless of how differenly he
>looks.
>> >If it looks like a duck, acts like a duck and quacks like a duck then
>for
>> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>> >goodness sakes it is a DUCK!!!
>>
>> So looking like a duck is part of the duck test. How does this square
>> with your preference for a Turing test then?
>
>I hadn't thought of comparing the Turing test with examining fossils and
>the behavior of the living beings they represent. But it's a good
>comparison, and I'm glad a few on this listserv have interjected it into
>the thread. Isn't the Turing test a typical example of a secular approach
>to creation?
It is basically an objective test. If you sit at a computer screen speaking
with several somethings who are electronically talking to you, and if you
can't tell he difference between the responses given by the computer
program and the responses given by the real people, then AI has been
created. If there were a difference, one would be able to distinguish a
machine from a person. Now, we might say that when we LOOK at the two
entities and see in one case a beautiful young lady and in the other an
ugly set of chips and wire, we might then reject that computer from person
hood. But that rejection is based solely upon looks and nothing else. If
that is the case, that we include or reject beings from humanity on the
basis of looks, it raises an interesting question.
How ugly does someone have to be in order to be denied their humanity?
When I was a Jr. Hi kid, in Ardmore Oklahoma, there was an old Indian who
had large tumors growing out of half his face. That poor man was really
ugly. We kids treated him badly. I suspect that deep down, we didn't
really want to examine his actual humanity which lay under those ugly
tumors. All we cared about was the looks. This is the danger of paying
attention to looks when deciding humanity.
Do I think that AI will be achieved nd the Turring test passed by some
computer? No. But I do think that there will be some close calls.
glenn
Foundation, Fall and Flood
Adam, Apes and Anthropology
http://www.flash.net/~mortongr/dmd.htm
Lots of information on creation/evolution
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